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Originally Posted by Chris is me
We can't keep up the two system model for much longer. Every event needs to become a "district" qualifying event, or this will continue to happen forever.
Here's a half baked, useless proposal based on absolutely no experience that probably won't work: The regions of the country will be divided into "District Regions" and "Transition Regions". District Regions have a DCMP and a high density of events. Transition Regions will eventually have a DCMP and high density of events, but for now they don't. The purpose of these Transition Regions is to allocate Championship slots based on geographic area while the DCMP structure is being set up.
Any team can go to any district qualifying event and get points. Teams in District Regions need to go to two events (maybe at least one in-district), qualify based on points for their local DCMP, and otherwise follow the same model they have been following. Transition Regions lack a DCMP, and they qualify teams for the World Championship based on the points earned at the first two events the team competes at alone. They just tally up the points once every team from a Transition Region is done and send the top X teams there. If a team competes at a single event, their points are doubled. At Transition Events, award based qualifiers just get to advance to CMP from the events directly. Regional Winners do not automatically but they probably qualify on points anyway.
This system has some fairness problems. A team could snipe weak events to get points in. A team could drop after a perfect first event to guarantee a WCMP bid. Everyone qualifies pretty late. These are real problems, but we just have to live with them, because it's a lot worse than the prospect right now where hundreds of teams will be unable to do two events, and hundreds more will be forced into back-to-back weeks, in a way that only gets worse. We can't force every region into districts immediately, so this way preserves the existing event density and structure while allowing freedom to cross district borders and allowing a more controlled Championship qualification structure.
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Wow this is a really great idea. I feel like it would work really well for the western side of the United states at least(not familiar enough with other regions to speak on them). I would like to someday see Arizona or even Arizona and surrounding states become a district but between the current team density and large area per state, it seems we are very far away from that happening anytime soon. I feel like Arizona and the surrounding regions are pretty okay right now but I could see problems arising down the road as nearby big states start becoming districts like Texas and California. Having this transitional region applied to us though would give teams the ability to still go to events in California and Texas.
I echo Mike's statements about relaxing the requirements of regional events in order to drive down costs for regional teams. However, I also agree that I don't see FIRST lowering that second or third regional event income that they get from regional teams.